Atlas, Anna Clyne’s new piano concerto, co-commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, takes its title and its inspiration from a four-volume compendium of photographs and drawings assembled by the German visual artist Gerhard Richter. The concerto was written for Jeremy Denk, who gave the first performance in Dallas in March, and he was also the soloist for the UK premiere, with the CBSO and its chief conductor, Kazuki Yamada.
Following Richter’s example, Clyne describes Atlas as a “musical montage and a lucid narrative”. It’s certainly discursive; each of the four movements in the half-hour-long work has a descriptive title, but the moods of all of them change so rapidly, that the labels seem irrelevant. The quicksilver changes of mood and direction are mostly prompted by the extrovert piano writing, projected with real wit by Denk, and allusions abound: there’s a hint of the Dies Irae plainchant in the opening movement, and later references to pentatonic orientalism, a churchy chorale, and distinctly Bachian counterpoint; the overall impression is of a brilliantly coloured musical scrapbook, artfully assembled.
